soup
@antderosa | facebook | testimonials | ask me anything
topics: syria | egypt | bahrain | libya | china | afghanistan | iran | iraq | japan | architecture | scandanavia | science | tech | art | design | photography
-
Mother Jones obtains Syrian government hit list containing thousands of names
From Mother Jones:
A 718-page digital document obtained by Mother Jones contains names, phone numbers, neighborhoods, and alleged activities of thousands of dissidents apparently targeted by the Syrian government. Three experts asked separately by Mother Jones to examine the document—essentially a massive spreadsheet, whose contents are in Arabic—say they believe that it is authentic. As Bashar Al-Assad’s military continues a deadly crackdown on dissent inside the country, the list appears to confirm in explicit detail the scale of the regime’s domestic surveillance and its methodical efforts to destroy widespread opposition.
(Source: matthewkeys)
-
@RickSantorum Well then I look forward to being reimbursed for any of my tax dollars that funded the Iraq War.
— Gina Marie (@ginambakkun) February 17, 2012
(via kellydeal)
-
Serious Question: Is there any modern example of a mostly libertarian government?
Curious to see what that looks like. Anyone?
-
In the safest, most boring country, the worst lone gunman shooting happens. The worst in the world, in history. But it will not make our country worse. The safe, boring democracy will supply him with a defense lawyer as is his right. He will not get more than 21 years in prison as is the maximum extent of the law. Our democracy does not allow for enough punishment to satisfy my need for revenge, as is its intention. We will not become worse, we will be better. We lived in a land where this is possible, even easy. And we will keep living in a land where this is possible, even easy. We are open, we are free and we are together. We are vulnerable by choice. And we will keep on like that, that’s how we want to live. We will not be worse because of the worst. We must be good because of the best.
Ola (via youmightfindyourself) -
I worked with the awesome David Charns yesterday on this piece about the government using Tumblr.
You may have seen the State Department’s Tumblr but there are others who are joining up, too. The National Archives runs a few (Document of the Day, the Exhibits Tumblr, and one about Our Presidents). One of my favorite things yesterday was meeting up with the ladies who blog from the National Archives and talking about funny documents they have. Did you know they’ve got the Jell-O box used in the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg trial? One woman said she came across documents from the Civil War listing the health of every horse in every regiment for EACH WEEK of the war. Crazy.
Anyway, the whole article is up on The Daily Caller. And thanks a million to Mark Coatney, the Peace Corps Tumblr people, everyone from the National Archives, and the USA.gov folks.
-
Special report: Government in cyber fight but can’t keep up
By Phil Stewart, Diane Bartz, Jim Wolf and Jeff Mason(Reuters) - The Pentagon is about to roll out an expanded effort to safeguard its contractors from hackers and is building a virtual firing range in cyberspace to test new technologies, according to officials familiar with the plans, as a recent wave of cyber attacks boosts concerns about U.S. vulnerability to digital warfare.
The twin efforts show how President Barack Obama’s administration is racing on multiple fronts to plug the holes in U.S. cyber defenses.
Notwithstanding the military’s efforts, however, the overall gap appears to be widening, as adversaries and criminals move faster than government and corporations, and technologies such as mobile applications for smart phones proliferate more rapidly than policymakers can respond, officials and analysts said.
A Reuters examination of American cyber readiness produced the following findings:
- Spin-offs of the malicious code dubbed “agent.btz” used to attack the military’s U.S. Central Command in 2008 are still roiling U.S. networks today. People inside and outside the U.S. government strongly suspect Russia was behind the attack, which was the most significant known breach of military networks.
- There are serious questions about the security of “cloud computing,” even as the U.S. government prepares to embrace that technology in a big way for its cost savings.
- The U.S. electrical grid and other critical nodes are still vulnerable to cyber attack, 13 years after then-President Bill Clinton declared that protecting critical infrastructure was a national priority.
- While some progress has been made in coordinating among government agencies with different missions, and across the public-private sector gap, much remains to be done.
- Government officials say one of the things they fear most is a so-called “zero-day attack,” exploiting a vulnerability unknown to the software developer until the strike hits.
That’s the technique that was used by the Stuxnet worm that snarled Iran’s enriched uranium-producing centrifuges last summer, and which many experts say may have been created by the United States or Israel. A mere 12 months later, would-be hackers can readily find digital tool kits for building Stuxnet-like weapons on the Internet, according to a private-sector expert who requested anonymity.
“We’re much better off (technologically) than we were a few years ago, but we have not kept pace with opponents,” said Jim Lewis, a cyber expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. “The network is so deeply flawed that it can’t be secured.”
“IT’S LIKE AN INSECT INFESTATION”
In recent months hackers have broken into the SecurID tokens used by millions of people, targeting data from defense contractors Lockheed Martin, L3 and almost certainly others; launched a sophisticated strike on the International Monetary Fund; and breached digital barriers to grab account information from Sony, Google, Citigroup and a long list of others.
The latest high-profile victims were the public websites of the CIA and the U.S. Senate - whose committees are drafting legislation to improve coordination of cyber defenses.
Terabytes of data are flying out the door, and billions of dollars are lost in remediation costs and reputational harm, government and private security experts said in interviews. The head of the U.S. military’s Cyber Command, General Keith Alexander, has estimated that Pentagon computer systems are probed by would-be assailants 250,000 times each hour.
(Additional reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky and Warren Strobel; Writing by Warren Strobel; Editing by Kristin Roberts and Claudia Parsons)
Photo credit : Reuters / Eric Schulzinger / Lockheed Martin Corp
-
Why should U.S. taxpayers subsidize the sale of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter?
Thanks to U.S. taxpayers, Lockheed Martin won’t have to sacrifice profits when selling the F-35 to foreign governments.
-
K Street lobbyists aren’t too worried about a possible government shutdown this weekend. They anticipate a short one, at most — and nothing, in any case, that will significantly disrupt their work.
Lobbyists Unperturbed By Government Shutdown Brinkmanship (via rubenfeld)
Well, that’s certainly comforting.
(via aatombomb)
Let’s be honest, the lobbyists are the ones in charge in Washington. Sad but true.
(via aatombomb)
-
Trying toConfirming the State Dept. Tumblr Is Legit. The State Dept. Tumblr is floating around our dashboards as we speak. As an NBC employee, I like to do my due diligence before posting on these things (I know, I know). I found this post by Alex Howard (via Jaclyn Schiff and Samuel Rubenfeld), who told me he could not confirm the Tumblr’s authenticity, sourcing his story to Jed Sundwall. Writing for Measured Voice, Sundwall talked about working with USA.gov to launch their blog on Tumblr, and mentioned the State Dept.’s own Tumbling adventure. But, was Sundwall able to confirm? No.So, where do we stand? Mark Coatney was able to confirm that the Tumblr is run by someone with a state.gov email address, and Howard is waiting to get sign off from some folks at the State Dept. Does anyone have any more intel?
Update: Daniel Schaub, the digital communications director at the State Department just tweeted, “Did you know @StateDept is now on @Tumblr?” There you have it.
-LB
[Thanks @digiphile]
-
Rwanda has the highest percentage of parliament seats held by women in the world. Click through for more eye-opening stats.
Page 1 of 2
